Br4d

The house cleaning in the scouting department is long overdue. With the exception of Shesty and Kreider the Rangers best players all came in from outside the organization. You can't do that for long without getting capstrung and the Rangers are capstrung right now.

Trouba is the right guy for the job. Leads by example and gives up his body whenever the play requires it.

I think it's an iffy deal for Calgary but it does resolve the question of whether they will be sellers at the trade deadline. If the cap expands by 15-20% over the course of the deal Calgary made a good deal. if for any reason it does not, well they'll be unhappy later in the deal.

Graves made Kakko look like Guy Lafleur by comparison.

Definitely Graves. Went from two-time disappointment to the guy who threw his stick up in the air at the horn in '94.

How many of the Rangers 1st and 2nd round prospects of recent years are sunk costs at this point? The scouting department overhaul may be based on the organizations interpretation of the question above.

The Rangers have done a particularly bad job of scouting frontline talent in the draft over the last decade. Good at finding defensemen and pretty poor at finding impact forwards. Change is generally good.

https://www.silversevensens.com/2013/2/9/3968402/top-25-under-25-no-6-mika-zibanejad Everybody thought Zibanejad belonged at the NHL level. Injuries aside he was seen as an excellent prospect who was doing a lot of the things you need to do to play in the NHL.

I'm not looking at numbers particularly. I'm looking at Kakko and nothing suggests that he is going to be a great player at this point. And really many players do not buck the trend. A few buck the trend and then we can point at them and "look it can happen." As an example: Zibanejad at 19 and 20 didn't look like a great player except for brief flashes here and there. Then he stepped up in his 21 year and was a solid player, scoring 20 goals. He had established that he could play at the NHL level, sometimes quite well. He also had weirdness to deal with at the start due to the NHL lockout. Out of Kakko we've had very little to go on so far. Basically his big strength right now is that the Rangers have the puck more often when he is on the ice than not and while that is a good thing it doesn't show up as much in the +/- as it should because he's neither a scorer or playmaker based on what we have seen so far. He could break out at 21 like Zibanejad did but by this point in his career Zibanejad had already established that he was an NHL player - the only question was whether he was a really good player or just a roster spot in the bottom 6. Maybe Kakko's career would have advanced further at this point if the Rangers had a way to send him back to Finland in his 18 season the way the Senators returned Zibanejad to Sweden when the NHL just looked to fast for him at 18.

Most players have shown strong hints of what they ultimately will be when they are two full seasons in. With Kakko you have to give him a small benefit of the doubt because 2020 was such a screwed up season. It's hard to develop as a young player in the kind of bubble the Rangers played in. Tough teams all over the place particularly for a Euro player to acclimate in. That said, he really hasn't shown even flashes of being a great player. Not at any point in his tenure here. That generally means he isn't likely to be a great player.

The contract will be very movable at TDL. The acquiring team will have him for another year at a reasonable cost. I hope Kakko is a top 6 guy for us out of the gate this year and we wind up happy with his production. If not he's a chip to get another top 6 player at the deadline.

Bure had 437 goals and he was part of a very good Vancouver team that never won a Cup. I think he was a marginal Hall of Famer. To get into the Hall Panarin is either going to have to score more goals or have the Rangers become a consistent contender and probably win a Cup or two.

Panarin is 30 and he has 187 goals and 569 pts in his NHL career with no Cups in the cupboard. He's maybe a 2% chance to go to the HoF at this point. 5 more years and he's likely to have 320 goals and 975 pts or so. That's not a Hall of Fame career unless you won a few cups along the way.

They're older and they're Canadian. Tkachuk was a young US player and Calgary probably never felt like a real long-term option. If Huberdeau and Weeger are planning on raising families Calgary may be just what they are looking for.

The biggest single effect of losing Panarin tomorrow would be a guaranteed top 6 slot at LW for Lafreniere and a guaranteed bottom 6 slot for one of Cuylle and Othman. Whether the Rangers would maintain their scoring pace would depend on whether Lafreniere could make real hay on PP1 and whether the bottom 6 LW was ready to steup up and be a star-in-waiting.

Fox is the best chance. Shesterkin outside chance tempered by his tendency to get injured so far. Things like that tend to get worse as you age. Nobody else on the team has established a chance at this point. If Panarin plays to 40 he'd probably do it.

I agree with everything you just said. However Colorado has their Cup in hand and they have a really good shot at another one. The Rangers aren't on that progression at this point. They're going to have to get very lucky to avoid getting stuck at tier 2 through the remainder of their veteran core contracts.

At 24 Matt Tkachuk just had a season better than either of them put together in their careers. That's what being very good in the NHL at 19-21 produces before the prime years. The prime years for Tkachuk are likely to blow away the prime years for Marchand and Wheeler. Put another way: Marchand 246 career goals, Wheeler 351 career goals, Matt Tkachuk at 24, 152 career goals.

Bad examples due to age. They weren't even in the NHL until after that 21 season that marked Matthew as a likely star.

At certain ages you see things out of players that bode well even if they aren't necessarily the hot phenom who is taking the world by storm. Matt Tkachuk put up 45+ pt seasons at 19 and 20. He had 37 goals between the two seasons. Then he had a kick-ass season at 21. That is exactly what you would expect out of a guy who was going to be a very good player down the road. Then we had the Covid seasons and he did well although not quite up to the standards of the 21 season they were clear 2L borderline 1L seasons. Then at 24 All-Star, MVP consideration, Selke consideration. 104 pts. 42 goals. +57. That's a progression that makes his prime likely to be very strong.

Matthew put up 34 and 77 pts as a 21 year old in his 3rd season. Generally speaking that's a sign that his prime is going to be great. It's not guaranteed superstar HoF numbers but in the modern NHL it's pretty good, maybe a step below that if he gets lucky and is on the right teams. Then we had the two seasons touched by Covid and his numbers fell just a bit, as many players did. Then we get to a "normal season" at 24 and he picks up the pace again and looks to be headed for that great prime again. Yes, it was a contract year, however it was exactly the season you'd have thought he'd have at 24 given what he did at 21. The two seasons in between were just weird and in truth he looked pretty good in them also, just not quite as good as you'd have expected given his 21 season. I'm really sorry the Panthers got their claws on him. It's not as bad as him winding up on the Hurricanes but it's still not good from a Rangers perspective. He's still likely to be a top 5 two-way LW from 25 to 27 and those are years we really want to compete.

This is the dilemma the Rangers face right now. Some of the kids haven't played well enough to date. The team as a whole has been just a bit lacking except for Shesterkin and the vets on the powerplay. However when you look at where the problem lies it is clear that it is in the missing production out of the young players. Kakko and Chytil haven't contributed enough for the minutes and match ups they have seen. Lafreniere has been good but not given enough of a role nor with the right support for his play to be a decisive factor for the team. So last year the Rangers made some deals at the trade deadline and fleshed out the top 6 to cover for the young guys who weren't progressing fast enough. This year they may have to do the same. At some point soon they're either going to have to get production across the board or stop patching every season and move on. The opportunity cost of keeping Kakko if he does not advance is likely to be another 1st round pick at the deadline. You can only do this for so long before the window closes inch by inch and the Rangers never had their best opportunity at a Cup.

If you're going to put out an offer sheet you have to be pretty sure the guy you are offering it to is worth it. An offer sheet for Kakko on any other basis just pisses off the Rangers and risks a tit-for-tat at some point for somebody who might actually be worth an offer.

Lafreniere is good for the opportunity he has received. 31 even strength goals thru his 20 season is a tantalizing pointer towards exactly how good he could be if given a full opportunity with strong players alongside him. You're 100% right that players often develop into good players and maybe even very good players later in their careers. However the team that went through all the crap years early on generally does not benefit from their development in the end. Zibanejad is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Everybody knew he had talent but the Rangers got the benefit of it not the Senators.

3 years in with very little to show for it is a very bad sign. If the Rangers want him to be a plus player they better give him big plus linemates. If that doesn't work over the first quarter of the season they're probably in package him at the deadline mode. If they put him on line 3 or line 4 the odds are overwhelming that next season will look like last season and then it's questionable whether they could even package him for anything worthwhile at the deadline. I still think the best answer at the start of the season is to give Zibanejad Lafreniere and Kakko. Lafreniere will be at his normal position with an excellent two-way C and Kakko can put his work ethic alongside both of them and try to make plays for them. It's probably the best shot the Rangers have to make something really good out of Kakko. Zibanejad and Kreider will still be a team on PP1.